Monday, February 15, 2010

Carnet de Extranjeria

Biometric United States passport issued in 2007Image via Wikipedia

The carnet de extranjeria is a identification card for foreigners here in Peru. It's pretty much the Peruvian equivalent of a US 'Green Card'. There are various ways of getting one, depending on what type of residency you have - married to a Peruvian, investor, retiree, etc. Most of them allow you to work legally in the country.

Every year, you have to go pay some taxes/fees and get a couple of stickers on it. Well, last year, I never did it. I haven't done it yet this year either. To top off the bad situation, I've lost my carnet - as well as my US Passport. So, I'm basically traveling around and living with no ID except for an expired Florida drivers license. Not a good place to be.

So, the point of this is to say - I'm going this week to (hopefully) get it all straightened out. Dealing with Peruvian bureaucracy is a pain in the tookus at the best of times. I don't have high hopes of this going smoothly. Fortunately, I DO have a photocopy of the ID page of my passport, so hopefully that will help with something. We've been searching, and can't find the folder where we had copies of everything else - my original carnet, the police report where we reported them lost etc.

I'll update as things go along, and let y'all know how it goes. I'm sure there are other people who have lost their ID, or been (considerably) late in paying the annual fees, so I hope my experience will be helpful to others!



UPDATE! - We (and by 'we', I mean my husband) found the folder with all the copies in it, so hopefully that'll make things a lot easier.
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4 comments:

  1. Take your kids with you. Sometimes it works as I had a woman in migraciones have pity on me and help me out right away...i.e. not have to do something irrelevant to the process of replacing my TAM or come back another day for the sticker that goes on the back of the C.E.

    Avoid the old people and talk to the young ones. The younger ones are normally more accommodating since they could care less about bureaucracy at that point in their careers.

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  2. Great idea. I know it's worked in a lot of other situations for me.

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  3. What a fascinating life you must live now.. It almost makes me want to sign up.. I'm so happy to see one of us grow up and move on to a better place.. love to you all!
    Tami Shively Jonker

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  4. Haha! I spend most of my days sitting in front of the computer, just like I did in Florida. :D The biggest difference is I watch hummingbirds in the garden through the windows instead of dolphins in the river.

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